Officially DONE with pumping!

I've been in Seattle this week. Since Littles got through my last Seattle trip with no expressed breastmilk, I didn't even bother bringing my pump along this time. I'm officially done with pumping! Yay!

We're also getting close to full weaning. Our PM nursing session has been slowly dropping off over the past few months. I'm coaching a high school girls lacrosse team, so I have a practice or a game about 2-3 weeknights each week, and I'm usually so rushed with picking Littles up and getting over to lacrosse that there's no time to nurse. Now that we're out of that evening nursing routine, both of us tend to forget even when we are at home. I think Littles has only nursed in the evening a handful of times in the last month.

I was more worried about the AM session, as that one has always been much more consistent (after all, where else do we need to be at 7 AM?) and Littles seemed much more attached to it. But, well, after 22 months, I'm ready to be done. So last week, I just stopped offering to nurse or even mentioning nursing in the mornings. I just get Littles up, change her diaper, and then ask if she wants to get some breakfast. Some mornings, she heads straight downstairs to the kitchen; other mornings, she tells me, in her inimitable toddler way, "No! Num-nums!" And then we nurse.

I'm interested to see how she acts when I get home from Seattle. Maybe she'll miss nursing and want to do it more. Maybe she'll realize that she really doesn't need to nurse anymore.

Either way is fine. I'm ready to be done, but I'm also OK with giving her a little time to catch up to me if she needs it.

For the record, I AM raising my child

I’m so bad about blogging when I’m not traveling for work. Which is too bad, because I’m only traveling about once a quarter now, and issues around working motherhood come up much more often than that.

Case in point. This past Sunday was gray and rainy, so instead of staying cooped up at home, we decided to take Littles to the aquarium. On the way there, an ad came on the radio for one of those companies that sets you up with a home-based business. The ad was aimed at working moms. "Are you tired of your kids being raised by daycare, rather than you?" it asked.

It's not the first time I've heard someone imply that I'm not raising Littles because I work. I just don't get it.

For starters, I grew up with two working parents, and I can tell you that both of them definitely raised me. As for my daycare teachers? I can't remember their names.

Besides, if I did stay home, and Hubby worked, does that mean that he wouldn't be raising Littles? If I stay home while Littles is young but then send her to school for kindergarten (rather than home schooling), does that mean that I will no longer be raising her at that time?

Of course not.

Anyway, I was there the moment that Littles was born. I choose where she lives, the clothes she wears, the food she eats. I choose whether she spends her free time playing outside or watching TV or visiting the aquarium or goofing off at home. I choose where she goes and what she does on vacation. I choose the role that religion plays in her life. I choose why and how to discipline her. I choose to be a role model to her, and I choose what that means. And perhaps most importantly, I choose to entrust her to Kristi during the day, precisely because I'm confident that she'll follow through on the lead that I set at home.

How dare anyone imply that I'm not raising my child? Ridiculous.

A big weaning milestone

I've had two days over the past few weeks where I left home before Littles woke up and returned after she was asleep, so we didn't get the chance to nurse all day. The first time, we were away from home, so bringing along expressed breastmilk would have been a huge hassle. Littles didn't seem to miss it. The next time, we were at home and could have easily given some frozen milk, but decided not to. Again, she didn't seem to miss it.

Last week, while I was in Seattle, Hubby and I decided to see if Littles could go the entire time (about 3.5 days, or 7 nursing sessions) without breastmilk. Not surprisingly, she did just fine.

It certainly simplified my life. I still pumped to keep my supply up, but didn't have to stress at all about how much I was getting, didn't have to carry the milk home, etc. Besides, I was pumping well under 1 oz at each session, so it really was hardly worth saving!

She's heading towards full weaning, slowly but surely. I'm ready when she is.

Almost made it

No tears today when I said goodbye to Littles. Hubby was taking her over to her sitter's as I got ready to leave for the airport, and it felt like I was just saying goodbye for the day, even though in my head, I know it's for three-plus days.

I flew through check-in and security, feeling like my old road-warrior self, with my brand-new carry-on luggage and no toddler on my back or car seat to struggle with.

I went to Starbucks for a venti latte that I could actually carry without said toddler and said car seat. I went to pull out my corporate Amex card to pay… and pulled out my zoo membership card instead.

That was something that certainly never happened to my old road-warrior self, who spent her weekends on the couch at home recovering from too much time spent in airplanes and hotels and airports, not walking around the zoo smiling at the look of absolute wonder on her baby girl's face.

And that's when I felt the tears coming to my eyes.

Ah well. I almost made it.

Tough times

So, the company where both Hubby and I work was one of the many that announced layoffs in the last week or so. Luckily, both of our jobs appear to be safe for now, but it still makes me a little nervous, especially since our company has already stated that it will be doing more layoffs over the coming months.

It does make me feel good about being a working mom, knowing that if, heaven forbid, Hubby got laid off, we wouldn't lose our family's only source of income. (Hubby and I work in different areas of the company, so hopefully we would not both get laid off at the same time!) I saw a post today on one of my mommy boards from a stay-at-home mom whose husband got laid off. She is pregnant again, and now has no health insurance. I cannot even imagine.

One upside of the bad economy is that our company is seriously slashing travel budgets. That means fewer trips to Seattle, and more time at home with Hubby and Littles! :) I had been going about once a month, but my trip next week will be my first since early November. It would be great to go another 2 to 3 months till my next trip!

Getting smart about business travel

Time for another trip to Seattle. I really can't complain because aside from the extra two days I spent in Wyoming about six weeks ago, I haven't had any business trips away from Littles since mid-August -- not a bad run.

I got smart on this trip. I have been flying out for my Seattle trips late Sunday night or first thing Monday morning, and flying home Friday afternoon or on the Friday night red-eye, so that I can get a full five days in the office (or very close to it). But I started noticing that my boss and his other remote employees (there are three of us now) usually flew in midday Monday and left Thursday afternoon or early Friday morning.

So this trip, rather than flying out on Sunday night or on the 7:30 AM flight on Monday, I picked a 10:10 AM flight today. Three hours might not sound like that much longer to spend at home, but to catch a 7:30 AM flight, I have to leave home before Littles wakes up, while a 10:10 AM flight gives me enough time to help Hubby get her up and get her ready. I was even able to drop her off at Kristi's today. This did cause me to miss baggage check-in by four minutes, so my checked bag had to go on a later flight -- a minor inconvenience in return for a few more minutes with my little girl! And thanks to "gaining" time traveling east to west, I still managed to get some good time in the office in the afternoon.

I'm flying home on the red-eye on Thursday night. I've been trying to avoid red-eyes because I am so dead the next day. These pictures were taken the day I arrived home after my last red-eye flight back in August :)

But I figure with a Thursday night red-eye, I can be in the office all day Thursday, still get home in time to help Hubby out on Friday morning, drop Littles off at Kristi's as usual, and then take a nap. From a work perspective, it's no different from if I flew home early Friday morning (either way, I would be inaccessible on Friday morning), but again, it makes a huge difference for Littles and Hubby.

I also spent last night cooking freezable food, emptying the recycle bins and the trash can, and washing and folding laundry. I remember when Hubby used to travel on business. Little things like cooking or finding a clean outfit become ten times harder when you have a baby pulling at your leg. I'm happy to know that Hubby has at least one night's dinner ready to go, that all the clothes are clean and put away, that he won't have to do an emergency emptying of the recycle bins or the trash can just to be able to throw something away, etc.

We'll see how it goes!

Searching for child care, round 3

This is my sixth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we found a nanny share for Littles when I initially went back to work. We were really happy with the arrangement.

So when we decided to move from California to Dallas, Texas, shortly before Littles' first birthday, one of our biggest concerns was finding a similarly wonderful child care situation for her. This was a little complicated because we had to do most of the searching from a distance!

Although we loved our California nanny share, I wasn't necessarily opposed to a different type of child care. So I looked at all sorts of different options.

Daycare centers
As I had done during our very first child care search, I started with a list of daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I also got recommendations from friends in the area, and scoured the City-data.com forum for the Dallas area -- lots of great information there. Then I looked up all the daycares on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website. This allowed me to see any licensing violations that the daycares had received.

We came out to Dallas for a househunting trip in late April, about six weeks before our move was scheduled. I stayed for an extra day with Littles, and we visited a ton of daycare centers near our new home.

At the end of the day, I had found three centers that I liked:

• Creme de la Creme. You have to check out the online virtual tour of this place. It is like Disney does daycare. There is a water park, a tricycle autobahn, an indoor fish pond... you name it! Unfortunately, you also pay for it -- the cost was significantly more than any other daycare in the area.
• Bright Horizons. A large national chain with a consistent reputation for excellence. I couldn't put my finger on anything specific, but this place just felt "right."
• Discover and Share. A local daycare that came highly recommended from the City-data.com forum. This place felt very comfortable. I talked for quite a while with one of the teachers, and she told me -- unprompted -- that it was the best place she'd ever worked at. From what I saw of it, I wasn't surprised.

In-home daycares
I also wanted to look at in-home daycares, but by searching the Texas DFPS website, I quickly discovered that there were not many in the vicinity of our new home. Reluctantly, I took this option off the table.

Other options
As soon as we knew we were moving, I started monitoring craigslist constantly for new child care postings. Weeks went by with nothing even remotely appealing coming up.

Then, about a month before our move, I saw a listing come up that sounded perfect! It was a mom with three small kids, looking to watch another child out of her home. I talked with her on the phone for about 30 minutes one night, and we seemed to be on the same page with regards to... well, just about everything parenting-related.

We had another trip to Dallas planned over Memorial Day weekend, about two weeks before our move, so we planned to meet the mom. I loved her! Unfortunately, Hubby did not. He was concerned that her two older kids (ages 5 and 3) seemed to be pretty addicted to TV, which is something that we are not big on at all. And he didn't like that the mom left her youngest child (7 months old) alone in a nearby room for a few minutes while we were talking. He put his foot down and absolutely refused to go with her.

The final decision
With no other options available, I agreed to go with a daycare center. Together, Hubby and I visited the three that I had identified on my April trip, and decided that Bright Horizons was our top choice. We put our deposit down to hold Littles' place.

I had a lot of reservations about Bright Horizons, though. Most of these centered around the fact that they wanted to put Littles in the toddler room. Developmentally, this made sense, as she was walking at that point and really no longer belonged in the infant room. But I was worried about the transition:

• At the time, Littles was still taking a few bottles of expressed breastmilk daily. We were working to transition her to whole milk out of the sippy cup, but it was not going well. Bright Horizons wanted her completely off the bottle.
• In her nanny share, Littles was used to sleeping in a crib or pack-n-play (portable crib) in a quiet room by herself. At Bright Horizons, she would be napping on a mat in a room with many other kids.
• Littles was still taking two naps most days, but the toddler room at Bright Horizons had only one nap a day.
• Naptime was scheduled for around 11:30 AM. Since Littles was moving across two time zones, I was worried that she might not be tired at naptime, then be exhausted later.
• I wasn't thrilled with Bright Horizon's menu. Granted, it was far better than some of the other daycare centers I looked at -- one served biscuits and gravy for breakfast, another served juice and brownies as a snack. (To a roomful of 1-year-olds? Are you insane?) Still, it just didn't live up to my standards.

In short, I was really concerned about Littles going through all this change, on top of moving halfway across the country, leaving the nanny who had taken care of her for over half her life, etc.

Hubby thought Bright Horizons was the right choice, and was really upset with me for being so wishy-washy. It wasn't a fun time, for either of us.

I kept looking on craigslist, hopeful that another option would come up. And finally, one did! I found a listing from another stay-at-home mom, named Kristi. She had great credentials -- she helped in her mom's in-home daycare as a child, went to college for early childhood education, worked in daycare centers, raised her two sons (ages 8 and 10), etc. She was watching her own two boys, who were home for the summer, along with another little boy who was a month younger than Littles. Her home was a little bit of a drive from ours, but it was manageable.

I met with her a few days after we moved to Dallas. (My mother-in-law came up from Austin to watch Littles as we settled in during those early weeks, which gave me some extra time to interview caregivers.) I felt far more comfortable with her than with Bright Horizons. And Hubby agreed to give her a shot.

We checked references, ran a background check -- and then, on Littles' first birthday, she started with Kristi.